“It surely is very tasteful,” said Mrs. Kennedy. “You are very poetical I should think, Mr. Willett. You have honored us very much by taking all this trouble, yet I know it was a pleasure, too. How sweet those magnolias are! There is not any perfume equal to theirs.”
Fresh fish and venison were considered enough in the way of meats, and Polly proceeded to make some of her famous bannocks to match Parker’s corn-pone, and the two waxed very merry over their competition.
Once in a while Agnes stole a look at her host, but though he was courteously polite, there was no answering glance to hers. It thrilled the girl to be beneath this roof that must now shelter the man who had grown so dear to her; to see there his rifle and shot pouch hanging on two buck horns, his hunting-shirts on pegs by the ladder which led aloft, the little row of his precious books upon a shelf on the rough wall, his silver drinking-cup full of wild flowers on the high mantel-shelf; all these things so distinctly personal, so associated with his daily life. She bit her lip, and her eyes filled with tears as she realized that by her own wilfulness she had lost half the delight of this June day. What could she say to make him understand her girlish pettishness? How could she undo the impression she had given him? There was no excuse she could offer that would seem adequate. She could not tell him that in a fit of mere foolish annoyance at his prolonged absence she had chosen to deceive him with regard to her relations with Archie. How courteous he was; with what deference he waited on her mother; how anxious he was for the comfort of his guests—he had planned this for their pleasure and she had made it but a bitter trial for herself.
“Shall you put a good crop in?” said the practical Polly, looking interestedly toward the corn-field, and addressing Parker.
“I hope to have enough; it does not take much to feed one man and his horse. I do not know all I ought about farming, but I am willing to learn, and I think I shall get along.”
“It’s well enough to have yer manger full,” Polly returned. “Ah, these are aisy times, Nancy, to those we had when no man durst go out alone to plant or hoe, and when working parties had to have their sentries armed and watchful of the Injuns. Manny a time their men have scuttled in from the fields, and manny a time has my Jimmy gone out with half a dozen others to guard some foolhardy man back to the fort who had trusted to his own two legs to get away, and would have been scalped in sight of his own house if it hadn’t been for his more cautious neighbors.”
“And I suppose those same men were ready to fly in the face of Providence again at the first chance, and would go out by themselves to their fields, trusting to luck to get back safe.”
“Yes, an’ if they didn’t happen to get ketched, they’d boast of how much bigger crops they had than anybody else. I never felt in peace mesel’ till Wayne’s treaty.”
“Yet you wouldn’t leave the first settlement till you had to,” Agnes reminded her.
“We all have our follies,” Polly replied calmly. “Yer no done bein’ foolish yersel’, Nancy.” A remark which Agnes at that moment silently indorsed.